Two days ago I was perusing the website of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), which, along with the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB), wrote a statement to President Trump and Congress in early February asserting that sex forms a “continuum” in all species (see our rebuttal here). Although the SSE’s statement is both biologically wrong and embarrassing, published just to conform to gender-activist ideology, it remains online (archived here), though the three Presidents who signed it haven’t yet seen fit to send it to the recipients, nor will they give us permission to post their response to our critique—a response sent to 125 signers of our letter.
That’s just for background. While it’s within the ambit of the SSE, ASN, and SSB to try correcting governmental misstatements about science, in this case the government’s executive order on biological sex gave the correct definition (and a note that it’s binary), while the statement of the three societies was flatly wrong. It’s not okay to distort biology in the name of politics. People will perceive this as a sign that the SSE is becoming “progressive” or “woke”, and that leads, as we know, to public mistrust of science and scientists.
But on Friday I found another sign that the SSE is getting politicized, and it’s a more blatant statement. This statement (below) shows that the SSE has been fully ideologically captured and has no truck with Republicans. That is fine for individuals, but when an entire scientific society tells us that Republicans—in this case Elon Musk—are unethical, that’s not good for the society, for its members, or for science in general.
Scientific organizations and journals should not take ideological sides (save when science itself is at issue), as we know from when the journal Nature broke precedent in 2024 and endorsed Biden for President in 2020. A paper on the outcome was published in Nature Human Behavior, of all places, and the results don’t speak well for journals taking sides. Here’s its abstract (bolding is mine):
High-profile political endorsements by scientific publications have become common in recent years, raising concerns about backlash against the endorsing organizations and scientific expertise. In a preregistered large-sample controlled experiment, I randomly assigned participants to receive information about the endorsement of Joe Biden by the scientific journal Nature during the COVID-19 pandemic. The endorsement message caused large reductions in stated trust in Nature among Trump supporters. This distrust lowered the demand for COVID-related information provided by Nature, as evidenced by substantially reduced requests for Nature articles on vaccine efficacy when offered. The endorsement also reduced Trump supporters’ trust in scientists in general. The estimated effects on Biden supporters’ trust in Nature and scientists were positive, small and mostly statistically insignificant. I found little evidence that the endorsement changed views about Biden and Trump. These results suggest that political endorsement by scientific journals can undermine and polarize public confidence in the endorsing journals and the scientific community.
That implies that journals and scientific societies should just shut up about ideological, moral, or political issues save when the issues deal with the mission of the organization. (This is the same kind of “ideological neutrality” adopted by several dozen universities, including mine.)
But the SSE can’t help itself. It galls me that a Society of which I was once President has become the Teen Vogue of evolutionary biology. Now I don’t like Elon Musk’s political behavior, for he’s breaking our government like a bull in a china shop (his work as an “engineering leader,” however, is admirable). But Twitter has its uses, and I remain on it, calling attention to all my pieces here. And when I post there I don’t feel that I’m telling people, “I love Elon Musk!”
But the SSE can’t survive without going after Musk, and so they’ve announced their withdrawal from Twitter, which you can see here. I reproduce their announcement below (indented):
SSE on Social Media
SSE Council recently voted to cease activity on the SSE account (@sse_evolution) on X/Twitter after April 15. This motion was raised due to the platform’s ethical misalignment with SSE’s mission and vision, particularly around equity, inclusiveness, and responsible communication of science. We encourage our members to follow us on other social media platforms in order to stay up to date with the latest SSE news.
Find SSE on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Facebook.
Announcements are also sent to all SSE members via email in our monthly newsletter. Make sure your email address is up to date by logging in here.
The Evolution and Evolution Letters journals will also stop posting to Twitter – follow Evolution on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Facebook and Evolution Letters on Bluesky and Mastodon.
You can still find the SSE Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC) on Bluesky and Twitter, and Evolution Meetings on Bluesky and Twitter.
Why did they do this? It’s no mystery: the Society is announcing its dislike of Elon Musk, who owns “X” (Twitter). And because the SSE sees Twitter as being in “ethical misalignment with SSE’s mission and vision, particularly around equity, inclusiveness, and responsible communication of science,” they must sever most ties with that social-media platform. (Note that they don’t explain this “ethical misalignment”, but I guess it consists of simply this: “We don’t like Elon Musk and won’t post on his site.)
Except that they still do keep ties with the site! As you see above, the SSE will continue to post announcements from the Grad Student Advisory Committee and announcements about the annual SSE meetings on Twitter. What is that about? If it’s unethical for the SSE to align with Twitter, then it must be unethical for its grad students, too, and especially unethical to use Musk’s site to harbor stuff about the annual meeting.
What about those other two societies? Well, I guess they haven’t yet gotten the message that their posting on Twitter constitutes unethical behavior. The American Society of Naturalists remains on Twitter (“X”), as does The Society of Systematic Biologists. Nor can I find any announcement of misalignment at the ASN’s own site or the SSB’s own site.
It mystifies me how among these three societies, which are closely aligned, only one has quit Twitter because it sees posting there as unethical. Come on, ASN and SSB, get on the progressive bandwagon!
And the middle school lunchroom behavior continues.
I assume that members will be selling their Teslas, too.
Of course, even though electric cars are touted as helping the environment. The societies should approve of them.
Good luck with that. The market for used Teslas has dried up.
Isn’t the turn around’s abrupt nature so curious though Rick?
(I’m not sure it has “dried up”, but it is certainly a tad dented!)
Quite lately a Tesla was the moral chariot of the left, proud environmental saviors.
Now it is Nazi.
How fast. Goodness.
D.A.
NYC
Yeah, how dare people try to save the environment. They must all be crazy lefties, right?
If the CEO or the main shareholder of a company turns out to be a deranged neonazi then that company deserves to go under, if you ask me.
It’s going to take more than Teslas to save the environment, Andre. We really need to end the expectation of personal on-demand motor transport entirely. Imagine instead public transit and long-distance passenger trains powered by renewable electricity whisking us seamlessly wherever our social credit score allows us to go.
I’ll leave it to others to decide if that’s a crazy leftie idea. But urbanists do hate electric cars. Too suburban-coded.
Nice strawman you’ve created there, Leslie. If you are in favour of lowering pollution you must be dreaming of emulating China.
It’s not a straw man at all, Andre. The lifetime emissions savings from an electric car are modest, mostly because of the very large emissions invested up front to make the battery and the heavier chassis. Once you’ve driven 40,000 miles or so (depending on the source of the electricity), the EV is a net saving over a similarly massive combustion car. Will EV owners keep the EV for 200,000 miles to really come good on the promise? We don’t know yet. Most EV owners have a combustion car, too. Will the EV rack up 200,000 miles? No one knows if used EVs will have a market because the potential buyer can’t verify the state of the battery, if it has been abused by frequent ultra-fast charging or run-flat discharging.
Western buyers demand very large emissions-intense batteries to give convenient range at high speed with head-snapping acceleration, driving vehicles that resemble the SUVs and pickup trucks they are used to, just (even) heavier. If batteries were much smaller, say 50-mile range and Vmax 40 mph, the cars could be much lighter and emit less CO2 to build, and last just as long. But urbanists still wouldn’t like them. They don’t like private cars in cities and they don’t like car-dependent suburbs. They want them walkable with nudges for public transit, no matter what the people who live in cities want, or that people with children who can afford to want to live in suburbs. And tiny little cars won’t sell there.
EVs have their attractions even where the purchase price isn’t subsidized. They are cheaper to run partly because electricity isn’t road-taxed as motor fuel. (In Canada, the equivalent tax per ton-mile would exceed the retail cost of the electricity.). Teslas are fun to drive and display conspicuous consumption of a luxury good. People who buy them aren’t sacrificing to save the environment. Transportation alternatives that would save the environment (or at least that part of it that CO2 affects) will require substantial sacrifices, imposed if not voluntarily assumed. The political question is how the government can change people’s behaviour without inducing the people to change the government. If we are serious about this — we aren’t — social credit to limit one’s personal emissions to a budget seems inevitable, and it can’t be repealable by a right-wing party getting elected. (The weakness of retail carbon pricing is that rich people, the ones who emit most of the CO2 through their economic activity, just aren’t all that price-sensitive. If someone can afford to buy a yacht, he doesn’t care about the price of diesel. You have to have his credit cards all say “No” when he goes to fill up at the marina. And the higher the tax on something, the larger the black market.)
I didn’t mention China. You did. But I’ll admit it crossed my mind. Our now-ex-Prime Minister described his admiration for China’s totalitarian ability to “turn its economy around on a dime” in articulating his vision for the greening of Canada, a project being taken up with new vigour by his designated successor, a former central banker in two countries and an ESG hedge-fund owner in the United States.
“This motion was raised due to the platform’s ethical misalignment”
One wonders what other things ethically misalign, and how the Society For Ethical Alignment plans to control what people should think and how they should behave to get social credits.
+1
I shouldn’t bring humor – or, humour – into this, but on the day of this post I just so had happened to see (again) the Monty Python sketch Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things.
We look forward to official science societies dissociating themselves from many things that suffer “ethical misalignment with (X’s) mission and vision, particularly around equity, inclusiveness.” For example, the rotation of the earth, which generates an unfortunate distinction between day and night, hence between light and darkness.
Then, there is gravity, which generates the distinction between up and down. These distinctions between one thing and another are just so misaligned with the values of equity and inclusiveness, as they are popularly felt on campus.
Gravity also discriminates against the
clinically obesebig-boned.This is just wrong. Gravity is racist. The proof is easy. Gravity is colorblind. Colorblind is racist. Therefore gravity is racist.
I often wonder if we – fellow Gen X/boomer gentlemen – were so demented in our college salad days?
Memory plays strange tricks. (But we weren’t cutting off dicks! – hehehe).
It does though, memory distorts. That being said I don’t remember the late 80s univs to be quite as morally off base as today.
D.A.
NYC
Opposites
Contradictions
Dialectics
What idiots these clowns are.
So many formerly fine institutions have become rabid woke extremists – which is particularly ironic in atheist/science circles as these are the people supposed to endorse rationalism and non-religion.
They don’t realize woke is a set of religions all in itself based on feels and vibes and not on empirical evidence. EVIDENCE! – they don’t get this, possibly b/c woke pretends to be non-religious, backed by “the science” when it isn’t.
A set of magical beliefs don’t need parchment or a bearded sky guy to be nonsense.
Oh. Also: PCC(E) hilariously writes above –
“…the Teen Vogue of evolutionary biology.”
This is golden, killer, and I will utterly steal it for my column. Like the thief in the night that I am. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
Yes, the brilliant “Teen Vogue” remark stood out to me, too – genius!
I agree. The “Teen Vogue” remark was great and this is not sarcasm.
Amen. I’d nominate it for Snark of the Week.
Wow. I didn’t realize that Facebook is ethically aligned “with SSE’s mission and vision, particularly around equity, inclusiveness, and responsible communication of science.” (I didn’t know that Facebook was ethically aligned with anything, except making money and selling people’s personal information to advertisers.)
Indeed! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1en1yjv4dpo
The irony is that the platform itself (as opposed to certain prominent tweeters) is neutral, being about the most neutral platform there is.
But that means that — given that half of America votes Republican, half Democrat — there are (shock, horror!) Republicans posting there! And, worse, the platform does not censor them!
Worst of all, some of the posters on X known the actual definition of biological sex! Obviously the SSE cannot be seen in their company.
Just some context from another part of the internet. I am active on Reddit. After Trump’s inauguration a lot of subs, including completely non-political ones, banned links from X. A widespread (I would not say majority, but common and not really contested) sentiment among Reddit leftists is that anybody who is still active on X is either a literal naci or a naci-enabler.
At the other hand I heard from reasonably reliable sources that X shadowbanned Hungarian users who (civilly) criticized Orbán in international discussions. It is pretty clear that Musk et al. mean the “right kind” of censorship when they say “free speech”.
The left is gradually going to quarantine X, while Musk happily turns it into an echo chamber. So much for open discussion.
I, for one, would prefer more substantiation than a mere reference to unknown “reasonably reliable sources” before declaring that it is “pretty clear” that Twitter is imposing this sort of censorship.
My source is personal attestation of a victim of this shadowbanning, in Hungarian. So it is pretty useless for you. I personally have a very low opinion on the ethics of Musk and think that something like this, as well as lying about it, is very much in character for him (so you can say I am biased), but I understand that in an era of mutual propaganda war you are wary. That is fair, there will be more info eventually.
You said sources plural. You give as evidence one victim of shadowbanning. That is an anecdote, not evidence.
At a recent faculty meeting one of my younger colleague proposed that my department should delete our twitter account. I asked why and she replied, “Because it’s a fucking cesspool!” (her tone of voice implied but she kindly did not say “you moron”, since apparently the answer to my question was obvious). When I replied “I get lots of my news from twitter” the room went quiet, as if I had confessed to drowning kittens in the lab sink or (even worse) being a political moderate. Nobody said anything for a minute, then we went on to the next agenda item. My colleague scowls at me in the hallways now 🙁
Coda: we do still post department announcements on twitter. This is a good one by two of my colleagues on excessive social media use and delusional psychiatric disorders.
https://x.com/SFUBioSci/status/1899869825343906063
What does Musk have to do before you finally see that he is an evil person? Dump TeSSler and dump X.
“This motion was raised due to the platform’s ethical misalignment with SSE’s mission and vision, particularly around equity, inclusiveness, and responsible communication of science.”
Exactly which kefirah clad rainbow colored haired LGBTQ minority raised this motion ?
You haven’t learned to leave civil comments instead of nasty ones. This adds NOTHING to the discourse.
I certainly agree with not using Twitter. To me it’s like people boycotting South Africa in the 80’s before apartheid ended. People argued but we need S.A.’s minerals and women won’t want to give up getting diamonds (I actually heard that argument). But boycott it we did and apartheid ended. While S.A. is not ideal now it’s not an apartheid state. I took part in peaceful protests about that issue at university. I wonder if that would be allowed now in the U.S.
There is a nagging connection that I just can’t put my finger on about boycotting S.A. in the 80’s and Twitter now. Oh well. Maybe I’ll think of it later.
As far as I know (and I cannot give references), the boycotting of goods did almost nothing to end apartheid in South Africa Besides, the boycott of Twitter is over now, with all the boycotters having gone to BlueSky or other sites, and Twitter is still the most widely used site. You should specify what you intend to accomplish by boycotting Twitter, as even if it were to go down Musk would still be the richest man in the world and one of the most powerful. It sounds like a performative gesture to me, which is fine if it makes the boycotters feel better. But the purpose of boycotting is usually to change unjust practices.